“Well?” Nadine’s come-hither gesture was vigorous enough to shake the cherry-shaped bobble hair ties that anchored her perfectly braided pigtails. “Come on, Keith. We gotta get started.” Mrs. Rossi gave each pair of us a lamp, which we pointed to a large piece of paper taped on the wall. Our job was to take turns sitting in front of the lamp while the other traced our silhouette. I let Nadine sit first. I traced her profile, marvelling at how her chin stood erect and confident. Her nose was pointy. Her eyelashes were curly and long. There wasn’t a single stray hair in her silhouette. Just as I got to her lips, Nadine told me to hurry the heck up.
“Your turn,” she said and pointed to the plastic stool. I had hoped the bell would ring before we would change places. Nadine removed her tracing and replaced it with a fresh sheet. I sat and looked at the paper with my shadow cast upon it. My hair was unkempt. My blue turtleneck was fuzzy and ill-fitting.
“You gotta look to the side, Keith. I can’t draw you if you’re looking right at the paper!” She sighed and cocked her hip to the side, as she usually did when she was exasperated. I took a deep breath and nervously obliged. Nadine got to work.
“Isn’t your mom the nanny?”
“Huh?”
“Look to the side, Keith. Don’t move.” Nadine adjusted my chin to match the outline she had already made. “You know. The Chinese lady. Isn’t that your mom?”
“She’s Filipina.”
“Yeah. The Filipina.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Then why do you have hair like this?”
“I dunno.”
“You must look like your dad, then.”
I realized I had never seen a picture of my father. The Keith Watson Smith of my mind was nothing more than the bright smile and dark skin my mother had described, but without a face. Mrs. Rossi made us stand in a circle and show each other our tracings.
“Hold it up, Keith.” I raised my paper half an inch higher. My classmates laughed at the outline of my head.
“Hey! Shut up!” Nadine screamed.
“No, thank you, Nadine. Watch your language. She is right, though. It’s wrong to laugh at other people.”
My classmates stifled their snickers until one of them exclaimed, “It looks like he has a wig on!” Then the class erupted into full guffaws.
“Stop it! That’s not nice!” Nadine screamed again.
“Enough!” Mrs. Rossi paced the room, preparing us for another one of her inspirational speeches. She placed her hands on the waist of her polyester slacks and looked each one of us in the eye. “Everyone is perfect just the way we are. We have to tolerate each other’s differences. Do you know what diversity is? This class is diverse. And you know what? That’s the way it should be. Whether you have curly hair like Nadine . . .” Mrs. Rossi caressed one of Nadine’s braids, and Nadine’s eyes widened incredulously, her hands closed into fists. “. . . Or matted hair like Keith’s . . .” Mrs. Rossi’s fingers stroked the surface of my head as if I was a llama at a petting zoo. “. . . We are all God’s beautiful creatures.” With each word in this last sentence, she patted my head for emphasis.
I thought the torture was over, but Mrs. Rossi then made us sit at our desks and embellish the outline with our facial features. I stared at the edges of me, unable to manifest an understanding of my own face without a clear image of the man who contributed in making my features. Did my father’s nose slope at this angle? Was my father’s neck slight like mine, with barely a sign of an Adam’s apple? When I sucked my bottom lip out of nervousness, was this his habit as well?
As I grew into a teen, the act of piecing together the shadow of my father overwhelmed me, so that all I could do was lie on my bed each night, stare into the darkness and hold the photo of Randell Sampson, a buoy in the sea of my confusion. “See you after school,” I imagined he would write on the back of the photo, this photo meant for me to keep.
“It’s for you to keep,” said my mother the day she presented me a tricycle. My tiny fingers ran along the edges of the stickers of illustrated pistons, which made the plastic frame appear to be a high-end motorcycle rather than a beat-up, plastic hand-me-down toy. I sat on the low-lying seat and twisted the throttle back and forth like I’d seen in an episode of Miami Vice. Sand trickled onto our parquet floor. When I pushed down on the pedals, the wheel was so worn it spun in place. I giggled with glee. Maybe I was too fast.
“That came from Pastor Michael. But he says you can call him Tito Michael.”
“Who’s that?” I pressed the stickers illustrating multicoloured buttons along the console.
“He’s from Winchester Eternal Life Church. That’s our church now.”
Winchester was not a Gothic building like the Catholic church we’d left. It looked more like a friendly community centre with a friendly wheelchair ramp and a friendly, larger-than-life poster of friendly, running children. “Spreading the word at lightning speed,” the poster said just under the children’s clasped hands.
Pastor Michael, the provider of plastic tricycles, was also the deliverer of arduously long sermons. He gripped his congregation with his pious dissertation on surrendering to Jesus the way he gripped the wood veneer pulpit: tightly with white knuckles and pink face from effort. He conducted the orchestra of each singsong sentence, waving the sleeves of his oversized taupe suit jacket, which bookended the width of his red paisley tie. He frequently shared stories of emigrating from Dublin in an attempt to connect with the immigrant and refugee population of the parishioners, even though he came from an upper-working-class, English-speaking family who came to Toronto by choice and not under duress. On our first visit, a hymn’s lyrics were projected onto a large screen, and the four-piece band began its number with a steady rock rhythm. Our fellow worshippers raised their arms into the air in praise and swayed side to side in time with the drum kit. Ma looked around and copied, albeit with some self-consciousness. An usher, an elderly Black man in suspenders and khaki pants, approached Ma quietly, interrupting her manufactured awe.
“Did you want to bring your son to the daycare?” Ma couldn’t believe her ears. She smiled and grabbed my wrist.
I was brought downstairs, feet dragging. “And what’s your name?” a young South Asian woman asked with a charismatic smile. I had never seen a grown-up crouch down to my eye level, and the change in size and scale perturbed me, so I looked away. From the side of my eye I could see that her voluminous head of curls was tamed into a thick braid. Her slender hand gently capped her knee for balance as she patiently waited for an answer.
“His name is Keith.” Ma pushed me gently so I would join the rest of the children in the daycare area. I whipped around and buried my nose in Ma’s crotch. I felt a tap on my shoulder. Another first. No one had ever asked permission to have my attention before. I turned towards the woman but kept my eyes closed in protest.
“Did you know we have a water table? I can teach you how to blow bubbles the size of your head!” I opened my eyes in shock.
“My head?!”
The woman nodded yes. Her teeth were bright tiles of white against her dark skin. I took her hand and joined the masses. I looked back to serve my mother an obedient smile, but she had already gone. About thirty of us, ranging from babies to toddlers, ran about while our parents worshipped upstairs and rejoiced in the free daycare. From our playroom, we could hear a combination of muffled singing and testimony. At the sound of the congregation erupting in thunderous applause, the toddlers would clap too, then return to throwing sand on the floor.